


i dont wanna have to miss you, i dont wanna say goodbye

by bluewritessometimes



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Death to the Mechanisms Spoilers, Gen, how do I even tag this, i fuck around alot with the toy solider's sense of like. real & pretend, its just all the mechs dying but from the toy solider's perspective, jonny & ts are the main characters in this but the others all show up at one point or another, raph/ts is kind of implied?? that was NOT my intention but i'll roll with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28001805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluewritessometimes/pseuds/bluewritessometimes
Summary: and one by one, the mechanisms stop pretending.[this is just all the mechs' deaths but from the toy soldier's perspective. its too late to write a summary im sorry]
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & The Toy Soldier, polymechs is implied but there's nothing explicit
Comments: 15
Kudos: 48





	i dont wanna have to miss you, i dont wanna say goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> i should be doing homework. but like three hours ago i was reading a fic about tim dying and i was like "hey i wonder what the toy solider thinks of that" and then i blacked out and wrote this.
> 
> cws for: death, canon-typical ts not believing its real, some mentions of violence but none of it is super graphic, brief suicide ideation? idk it's up to interpretation, & alcohol. plus this is dttm so all dttm-related cws that i may have forgotten goes here too.
> 
> title is from big bowl in the sky by cavetown ! this fic was sort of inspired by that song? or maybe the song came on while i was writing and i was like "oh hey this fits" and put it on loop while i finished it. i honestly cant remember.

if you asked anyone else, they would have said nastya went first.

and they’d be right, to a certain definition of the word “went.” nastya did leave them first. but she hadn’t died until many years later, long after both ivy and marius were gone.

after they’d stopped pretending.

the toy solider knew most people stopped pretending. the angel had. bertie had. the rose reds, all 5067 of them, had stopped pretending. and the toy solider missed them every day. 

but the toy solider knew its friends, its real friends, would never stop pretending. ivy had explained it many times. they just weren't allowed to leave the game! the doctor had made sure of that. and maybe they didn’t like it at times, but they all said that the toy solider made the game a little more bearable. 

(well. maybe they hadn’t said it directly, but it knew what they meant. 

it’s why jonny always bothered it when he was bored.

it’s why marius made it waffles every morning, even though it didn’t eat.

it’s why nastya, just once, let it come into the vents when she was feeling sad.

it’s why brian said that he trusted it the most to help fix his mechanical joints.

it’s why tim let it back in, letting it perform with them one last time.

it’s why, despite all their jokes, ashes would never leave it behind on a planet.

it’s why ivy lent it her books that she wouldn’t let anyone else touch.

it’s what raphaella meant when she said “i love you.”)

so they would never stop pretending. and that was good, because the toy solider wouldn’t either. it liked this game. it was one of its favorites. 

even when nastya left, she hadn’t stopped playing. she was just playing somewhere else! which the others didn’t like, and the toy solider pretended not to like so that it could be included in their grief. but if nastya wanted to play something else, that was her decision, and the toy solider was not in charge of other people’s decisions. 

(except for that one time it was a general.

that was a fun time.)

ivy, eventually, decided to follow nastya’s lead. she said she was going to go somewhere else. go to a planet full of libraries and books, and play out a game called “retirement.”

the others thought it was stupid. but ivy didn’t change her mind, and by the next morning she was gone.

it was another hundred years before the toy solider realized.

ivy had stopped playing.

it was such a wrong feeling it couldn’t even verbalize it at first, just sat on the floor of the aurora and pretended to cry. it was eating dinner with the others at the time. they had tried to ask it what was wrong, but it didn’t even know how to explain. how could they not have felt it? the sudden realization that someone who’s always been playing, who’s done everything there is to do in the game, had just stopped?

it tried to tell them, eventually. and they didn’t believe it, because of course they wouldn’t, because they weren’t supposed to stop playing. but even so, they agreed to stop by the planet where ivy was.

it was gone. burned up in a fire.

ivy wasn’t there.

the crew was much quieter after that.

someone tried to bring up that if ivy was gone, nastya might be as well. jonny shot them.

the toy solider tried to explain that she couldn’t have stopped pretending, not yet. no one listened. 

(“it’s just in denial. that’s a common symptom of grief.”

“symptom? grief isn’t a disease, marius, it doesn’t have symptoms.”

“sure as hell feels like one.”)

that was fine. they didn’t listen a lot. 

marius stopped next. the octokittens ate him. 

this happened a lot, so the crew wasn’t worried at first.

they waited an hour for him to regenerate. 

two hours. 

three.

it never took this long, usually.

four hours.

that was when the toy solider realized. marius wasn’t just taking a long break.

he’d stopped playing, too.

it tried to bring this prospect up the the others. they thought about this for a long, long time.

six hours. 

seven.

(“it might be right, you know.”

“no. no, it can’t be- i can’t loose another one of them. fuck. i can’t loose another one of you.”)

finally, at twelve hours and twenty-seven minutes, they accepted it. marius was gone now. 

they’d lost another one.

someone, again, tried to bring up nastya. they were shot twice this time. 

the toy solider did not mention that it knew she hadn’t stopped yet.

but later, she did stop. the toy solider felt it in their wooden heart.

many of its feelings were pretend. this feeling- the awful ache like someone was carving though its chest and pulling it out, piece by piece- this was real. it was the second most real experience it’d ever had. 

it tried to tell the others. that nastya was finally gone for good.

jonny shot it.

the next time it felt someone stop, it thought it was a mistake. the crew was all on the spaceship! no one had died recently, no one had jumped out an airlock or shot someone else. there was no way someone could have died. 

it went around the ship anyway, just to check.

ashes was gone.

it checked around again, to see if they were just playing another game. hide and seek, maybe. ashes never played that, but it was never too late to start.

no one else had seen them.

(“they couldn’t have just left. we’re in the middle of space. they can’t just do that.”

“nastya did.”

“the airlock couldn’t have opened, i- we would have known. we must have.”

“did you know when nastya left?”)

and the toy solider knew it was them. they had stopped playing, somehow or another. 

another one of its friends were gone. 

the crew tried searching for a while. but no one, not even the pilot, really had the heart to keep looking. the toy solider thinks they all felt it too. they just didn’t notice.

tim went next.

tim had known he was going to die for a while, the toy solider thought. he was quieter, spending more time holed up in his room with his guitar. when he did come out, he talked mostly to jonny, asking if he remembered anything about the moon war. 

jonny didn’t notice the signs. or if he did, he denied them.

(“why the hell do you care about the war, anyway? it was a while ago. i don’t remember much. mostly that bertie complained a lot.”)

tim told the toy solider he was going to stop playing. it was the morning before, and they were standing in front of the gunship he was going to board.

he’d given it his guitar.

told it to keep playing for him.

and just like that, two hours later, he was gone too.

the explosion was huge.

the crew actually believed it this time, about how tim had stopped playing. none of them seemed to have the energy left to argue. 

jonny stormed off immediately. said he was going to find tim’s body and give him a proper funeral if it killed him. 

(the statement seems to hold more weight now, considering what’s been happening to everyone else.)

raph departed to her lab, saying she still had some tests to finish running. 

brian buried his face in the toy solider’s uniform and sobbed. 

a few days later, raphella made an announcement. it was clear they were dying, and there was one last thing she wanted to do before she was gone.

one final experiment, she said. 

they tried to stop her. the toy solider even joined in. it wasn’t in charge of what the others did, but it really, really didn’t want her to stop playing.

or maybe it just pretended to want.

it was hard to tell the difference anymore.

raphella didn’t budge. she wasn’t dying, she said, not really. she was just partaking in an experiment, and was unlikely to return. 

(“it’ll be fine, i promise. i’ve done more dangerous things before and it turned out fine.”

“ivy’s done more dangerous things than read some fucking books, and look what happened to her!”)

in the end, they couldn’t stop her. she was gone, and the crew was down to three.

the toy solider felt her stop a few days later. 

it decided not to bring this up to the others.

they had enough on their minds already. 

it was another two centuries until the toy solider felt it again. this time, it didn’t even hesitate. it knew exactly why the ache was back.

it didn’t take long to find jonny. he was standing outside the airlock, his pistol raised and positioned by his head.

the toy solider asked what he was doing.

jonny explained through tears that brian was dead. he’d gone out the airlock, and it was too late to get him back. 

(“that bastard. that fucking bastard, why didn’t he tell me? i could’ve helped him- i could’ve done something- we could’ve-”)

the toy solider also pretends to cry.

or maybe it really cries.

it doesn’t know if there’s even a difference anymore. 

it doesn’t like this game anymore. 

it grips jonny’s hand tightly and makes him promise, promise on all he has left, that he won’t stop playing. it won’t loose its last friend. it won’t. 

jonny seems surprised, but he agrees. 

and it works. to a certain degree of work, anyway. jonny does not suddenly disappear from the ship. he does not go out the airlock, or get eaten by octokittens, or hand the toy solider his harmonica and tell it he’s going to die. 

but the game isn’t the same. the ship is too quiet, even quieter than the solider thought possible. they don’t perform anymore. it still plays tim’s guitar sometimes, but only when jonny can’t hear. the sound upsets him now.

but they both keep playing. because jonny made a promise. and even though the toy solider didn’t, it can’t just leave jonny alone here. he wouldn’t be able to cope with that. it knows that. 

one day jonny tells the ship to stop at a backwater bar- one of the first places they’ve ever had a gig, if the toy solider’s memory still works. (it’s been less and less sure of that. when did it decide to pretend to forget?)

they walk into the bar arm and arm, and jonny orders nine beers. the toy solider asks if jonny really intends to drink all of that. jonny just shrugs. 

a fight breaks out on the other side of the bar. jonny watches, occasionally calling out insults to the men involved. 

he does not join the fight.

the men go for him anyways, first with fists and feet, and when that doesn’t work, knives and guns.

the toy solider can almost trick itself into thinking they’re back in a war, fighting the enemy with all of the life they have left. 

(it was much more, back then.)

and then it happens. 

jonny is stabbed clean through the heart and falls, choking on his own blood, to the cold bar floor. 

and the ache is so bad the toy solider can hardly stand.

it does not make eye contact with the man who stabbed him as it gently picks up his body.

it wishes it didn’t know. it wishes it could tell the men that jonny will be back within an hour, two at most, and that once he was back he would destroy both of them. 

but it knows that isn’t true.

it walks slowly back to the ship, leaving jonny’s body on its bed. it doesn’t want to leave him.

it doesn’t want to leave this game.

but it’s no fun anymore. all of its friends have left. 

it picks up tim’s guitar and starts to pick out a melody. 

__

_some call us heroes and some call us fools  
_ _and all say we’re destined for defeat…_

it starts to cry. it shouldn’t be able to, but it does, so hard it can barely see the strings in front of it. 

as the last bars finish out, it knows this is the end. it’s going to stop playing.

maybe death is just a new game that all its friends are playing too.

__

_the end comes near  
_ _face your fear  
_ _prepare your souls, there’s no happy ending_  
_no happy ending  
_ _no happy ending in sight for us!_

**Author's Note:**

> hi ! im tired.
> 
> im on tumblr @stimtoysolider, i talk about things [mostly bertie], comments would be super pog if u wanna do that, what else do u put in the end notes 
> 
> uh. murder is ok


End file.
